So ah, if he wants his last name to be pronounced like "Greyning" then why does he spell it so that it looks like it should be pronounced "Growning?" Seriously, by what rule of English grammar does "Groe" sound exactly like "Grey"??.

From the same english rule that allows for words like Phoenix (unless you pronounce this Fow-nix). Words where oe is pronounced as "ee" are from the "ioticized omicron" spelling in Greek, ÎÎ, which was originally pronounced like "oy", but is often simplified into just an "ee" sound or similar.

And also of House Minority Leader John Boehner. Or Wayne Newton's song Danke Shoen.

It seems to be American English standard for German names that have an o-umlaut or oe (which is the same thing; the umlaut started out as a small e laying on it's side on top of another vowel) to pronounce it like "ay", instead of like the German sound English lacks or even "ur", which is more like how I think most English speakers hear o-umlaut.

I would say because the A in ASCII thought that nobody should ever need the o umlaut (even this bloody site gets confused over Ã), Germans on the other hand who like to comply to any given ridiculous standard (insert Godwin here) responded by thinking oe is close enough.

Technically, "oe" came before "o-with-umlaut." It was "oe," then it became "o-with-e-on-top." Because of the way an "e" looked at this point in German orthography, it became "o-with-two-parallel-vertical-lines-on-top," which became "o-with-umlaut." This is the same way we got a- and u-with-umlaut. You can see this in old script for "schoen" at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: (schoen, scho-with-e-aboven, scho-with-umlautn).

I'm curious, however. On the Wikipedia page you link to, the "way an 'e' looked at this point in German orthography" seems to be "exactly like an 'n' looks". Am I missing some subtle difference? If not, how did they tell the difference between the two?:)

That's a very odd explanation, considering "Groening" is a German surname. Here, it is technically "gr" + o-with-umlaut + "ning," where the o-with-umlaut is pronounced like an "eh" sound in your mouth while your lips are shaped like you're making an "oh" sound. However, to make things easier for the Alemanophobes in the audience, we alter it to English phonetics (the o-with-umlaut does not exist in English).

That is incorrect. The "r" comes before, not after the vowel you're trying to approximate. You could say it would be "better" to transliterate it into English as "Gerning." However, Germans prefer instead to keep the spelling that they traditionally used, I'd imagine. Take note that the umlauted a/o/u are all predated by ae/oe/ue.

I think the GP AC is trying to say that the pronunciation of 'ö' in Germanic languages is approximately like 'er' in English. So a possible transliteration could be 'Grerning', but nobody seems to use that logic in practice.

So much ignorance in your post as to make my head linguist head spin, but this is the sentence I'm picking:

Seriously, by what rule of English grammar does "Groe" sound exactly like "Grey"??

Um, none, for a few reasons:

1) This [wikipedia.org] is what "grammar" means. Clausal structure, etc.

2) The word you're actually looking for is orthography [wikipedia.org].

3) Finally, and this is a big one, English orthography wouldn't apply to a German name. One of the reasons spelling is so difficult in English is that it is a loanword slut. It hangs around at the linguistic docks, taking any wayfaring word spelled in roman characters home. It is the reason we have one of the largest vocabularies on the planet, but also the reason why spelling is difficult. I'll take it, though. It beats the socks off of the Academie francaise [wikipedia.org], which exists to keep foreign words out of French in favor of made-up French equivalents that no one uses. It also beats the Japanese system of ghettoization by the use of a different character set for foreign words. And it is simpler than the daunting task ahead of Chinese speakers, who have to find characters which have a similar sound, and whose meaning at least has something to do with the word in question. Overall, English's flexibility and open nature is a key to its strength.

"The call has already gone out to the animators to put the mouths back on the characters."
An Eiffel Tower reference from WWII? The operators purportedly had the elevators working again 10 minutes after Paris was liberated. Very nice.

Not particularly, the joke is that the characters were just not going to be able to speak. Or apparently eat, so I guess that means it would've been a short lived return.

Of course having explained the joke, it's now ruined. In other news, why didn't somebody negate the goodnewseveryone tag? Strikes me as somebody that didn't really get the show trying to demonstrate knowledge.

According to Mark Evanier [newsfromme.com], who's been in animation for decades:

If you're an aspiring cartoon voice actor who thinks "This is my break," think something else. They'll get thousands of submissions and it's unlikely that anyone with hiring capacity will ever listen to any of them. This is, like I said, not the way to really find a replacement. It's just a showy means of intimidating the actors and their agents...a way which costs the studio nothing. They don't even have to book time in a recording studio or ha

Ya know, I think it would be awesome if in the first episode of the new series there was going to be a scene with all the characters without mouths for some oddball reason. Call it a quick "reference" for all the geeks who followed this story:)

This Futarama crap is crap. The Simpsons is what should come back. Phil Hartman especially. He must be holding out for 10 million at least. Also, I like The Who to continue to make guest appearences from time to time.

I'd love it if the Simpsons from the 80s and early 90s returned.

Unfortunately all we get are the Simpsons from the late 90s and 2000s.

But the The Why of Fry was the only good one on that list. I refuse to watch Jurassic Bark since I didn't think it was funny that Fry incinerates his loyal dog. The other two are part of Futurama's slide in space opera drama between Fry and Leela.

Although I knew the only real possibilities were the original cast returning or the show not being made.

Even though we have the proverbial "500 channels", there's still as much a lack of good creative shows as ever, and Futurama fits that bill perfectly. Newt Minow's "vast wasteland" is alive and strong!

Especially since the #1 show "American Politics" got a whole new set of writers but has still managed to get even dumber than ever... ludicrous plots, inane dialog, stories so far-fetched no one would ever believe them in real life...

Especially since the #1 show "American Politics" got a whole new set of writers but has still managed to get even dumber than ever... ludicrous plots, inane dialog, stories so far-fetched no one would ever believe them in real life...

The sad thing is that many of the most popular shows from the 70s were creative and intelligent (and funny, in the case of sitcoms):

All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show... just to name a few. Adult shows written for adults without having to resort to crudity and shock value, well, OK, "All in the Family" did, but it was usually in the pursuit of Making A Point(TM), which it did very well. Sure, there was a lot of crap back then, as always, but it s

I disagree. I don't think it glorifies torture. I think it shows a situation where Jack Bauer finds it to be lesser to two evils. I don't always agree with what Jack Bauer does. He's murdered people, not in self-defense, or trying to save the world. He's flat out murdered people more than once. He does horrible things sometimes. He's not a perfect hero (well, he's superhuman in what he can do, but he does morally questionable things all the time. Things I wouldn't do if I were him.). He's pushed by

I don't know about you, but I didn't see this one coming. I mean, Billy West, Katey Sagal, John Di Maggio, Dan Castellaneta, Phil Lamar, and everyone else on the cast are all expendable and anyone can do the voices they do.

Okay, Leela _could_ be replaced, but would anyone buy Leela as Leela with any voice other than that of Peggy Bundy? Amy Wong can be replaced, but why would you want to? It would only serve as a distraction and land you in a JTS category. (for the record as an aside: if Fry and Leela do

IMO, unless they get Dave Herman back, it's not the whole cast. That guy is awesome. His regular voices like Roberto, Mayor Poopenmeyer and Dr. Wernstrom are all hilarious, but also he's got range: he can produce amazingly different voices for all those one-time characters he does, whom you don't really remember, like Leela's martial arts sensei Fnog.

Also it's silly to focus just on the voice acting cast. I don't know their names, but I know it takes a huge crew of talented artists and writers to make the magic happen, and I hope all those talented people come back. It would be bad to cut back on the visual and writing talent to pay for the voice talent. The last thing any of us want is 26 half-baked, mediocre episodes. Better the show should end at five good seasons.